Your Roots are Showing

The Roots Festival lineup is scheduled to be revealed during a kick-off party at the Greenhouse Grille on March 18. Tickets are on sale for $15. The party will feature great music from 3 Penny Acre, Lakeside Drive and Joy Kills Sorrow.

Photo by Ira Hantz (3 Penny Acre Facebook Page)

3 Penny Acre is a musical collaboration between three up-and-coming songwriters: Bayard Blain, Bernice Hembree, and Bryan Hembree. Fans and critics have quickly identified their unique, Ozark-inspired sound as distinct, yet universally appealing. Listeners in all corners have begun to appreciate their attention to lyrics, harmony, and carefully crafted acoustic arrangements steeped in roots music traditions but with a focus on fresh, new songs.

— 3 Penny Acre Website

Courtesy Photo: Lakeside Drive

How is it that something so unlikely can also be so infectious, so naturally exhilarating? Pulling in familiar elements and irreverently scrambling and recombining them, Lake Street Dive are at once jazz-schooled, DIY-motivated, and classically pop obsessed. Beginning with catchy songs that are by turns openhearted and wryly inquisitive, this northeastern quartet proceeds to inject them with an irresistible blend of abandon and precision. Composed of drummer Mike Calabrese, bassist Bridget Kearney, vocalist Rachael Price, and trumpet-wielding guitarist Mike “McDuck” Olson, Lake Street Dive encompasses a myriad of possibilities within its members’ collective experiences, and the resultant music is a vivid, largely acoustic, groove-driven strain of indie-pop. “It seems the only limitation we have,” Kearney explains, “ is that we try to make music that we would like listening to.”

– Lake Street Drive Website

Courtesy Photo: Joy Kills Sorrow

Some people prefer pop music that behaves like math: once a few familiar variables have been determined — female vocals or male? Acoustic guitar or electric? — the end result should be easy to predict, and always sound the same. That’s not the Joy Kills Sorrow method. This Boston-based string band favors a more unpredictable approach relying on musical chemistry and improvisation. Hence the title of their sophomore album, “This Unknown Science.” All of the members have been touted as virtuosos, and they effortlessly hunt for unexpected outcomes and new discoveries. “We like experimenting and stretching boundaries,” explains guitarist Matthew Arcara, an acoustic player gaining a name for himself as both an up-and-coming guitar slinger and luthier. Arcara has taken home several honors at various guitar competitions including Winfield’s National Flatpicking Championship in 2006.